The Point (21 page)
I could fit him into my Renaissance painting. He is the slave merchant, just off to the left, you can tell by the way he smiles, a patient and sinister smile that knows it will have its way in the end. If he’s not actually fingering a dagger, it’s certainly tucked into his belt. What he is holding is a bag of gold, the painter has wonderfully delineated its heaviness, and you can see the man weighing it in his plump beringed hand: everything has its price, for selling and buying.
Beside Clay Brent, I realised, George is a fine wholesome lad.
I said no to Brent. Politely; I have no desire to fall out with anybody. Pressure of work, over-extended, couldn’t give him the attention he’d expect and deserved. He was not happy.
And Clement was greatly disappointed. He’d liked the idea of bringing his brother’s work into a connection with his, of helping but also performing for him, he liked to perform, did Clement, and an older brother is an excellent audience.
Of course, I jumped to conclusions, where Clay Brent was concerned. But not very far, I didn’t think. Not very far.
Elinor is looking at an invitation on the screen of her computer. It has been sent as an attachment to an email. It is formal and formatted and in full colour, a blushing cream with dark sepia print, a perfect picture of a real thing that Elinor understands has no existence, and quite beyond what she knows Flora’s skills to create. Flora does handsome invitations, from a printer in Fyshwick, on stiff cards with chosen fonts, and delivered by the postman.
This is an invitation to Elinor and Ivan to come to dinner. Elinor rings: Alas they can’t, not on that day. What day will suit, asks Flora. And another invitation, formal and formatted, arrives with the new date.
It is a dinner in honour of the Spensers, says Flora, because they are going overseas. But only for three weeks, says Elinor. That’s a long enough excuse to have you for dinner, says Flora. She is going to do her new thing, the main-course-less meal.
This from one who has often said that the shape of the classical French meal is so perfect it could be a force of nature. The little nibbles, the
amuse-gueules
she calls them in this company, for entertaining the palate, or if you like, the gob, the entree, the main course – the
plat de résistance
, perhaps – the salad, the cheese, the dessert. It is a narrative, with a beginning, a development, a climax, a denouement, a conclusion. Aristotle would have recognised it, she says.
Once Ivan asked, Aren’t some of those synonymous, and Flora said, Not really, overlapping maybe but not synonymous.
So the main-course-less dinner will be a curiosity.
Flora rented several apartments in the area before buying this one off the plan, and had it built without most of its interior walls, so there is a large space with the cooking area in one corner and sofas in another, with a long table to eat at in the middle. She has two large pale-coloured walnut armoires, one for linen, the other for china and glasses. One is quite plain, with small scallopy scrolls for decoration, the other is carved with ribbons and doves and roses. They remind Elinor of the armoires in the house in Séverac, not surprising, they are French. There’s an antique shop in Sydney where you can buy such furniture if you have enough thousands of dollars; Flora brought hers from England, one was her mother’s, the other came from her marriage. In this large white plain room with its bright Antipodean light they are old and decorated and beautiful; apparently complicated but in fact plain and useful.
Elinor has expected there will be a number of people for dinner, but only four places are laid, on one end of the long table. The other has a hydrangea in a pot, bowls of fruit, and several tidy piles of books. There is a desk with Flora’s rarely used computer against a window, but the books pile up on other surfaces and on the floor. There are bowls of pistachio nuts and tiny radishes and olives on the low table between the sofas, but nobody will sit there for long; soon people will be standing round the kitchen space, then sitting on chairs at the table, even before dinner is served.
The fourth person is already there, taking big white linen napkins out of the armoire, an intimate act not wasted on Elinor. Can he be the psalm dancer, she asks herself, meaning to remember to make this remark to Ivan, later. Jerome shakes hands and inclines his head in a courteous grave way.
The tiny radishes are grown by a woman at Pialligo, in a vegetable garden on lush river flats. You dip them in coarse salt and smear them with unsalted butter, and eat their crisp red flesh, stalk and all.
First course is oysters Rockefeller. Flora’s thing of the moment. Large South Coast oysters domed over with a spinach puree and grilled.
We used to eat them in the sixties, says Ivan. Or at least, people did. I think I was a bit of a purist then. Raw, with lemon, not even cocktail sauce; I thought that was the only way.
These are, in some ways, quite pure. The oyster is still cool, quite uncooked, the spinach part is grilled and hot.
I’ve got interested in sixties food, says Flora, I think we are unfairly critical of it.
You didn’t live through it, says Elinor.
It was quite good fun, I thought, says Ivan. I remember some great meals.
Chicken Kiev.
The real thing, not the industrial job, it’s rather good, says Flora.
Yes, so it was, says Ivan.
Jerome is not saying much. I’m trying to remember what I was eating then, he says. Stew, I suppose. A lot of pearl barley in it. Plenty of vegetables, that we grew.
Good grief, says Elinor, I’d forgotten about pearl barley.
Your good luck, wouldn’t you say?
Oh no, says Flora, pearl barley’s lovely, if you treat it right. Turkish people do very good things.
So’s everything lovely, if you treat it right, says Elinor.
I can’t think of anything that isn’t.
For a while they try, but everything they mention Flora vetoes, on the grounds that it’s an industrial version, or not done properly, or a matter of prejudice. Like Jerome’s turnips; has he ever had them gently sautéed in duck fat, with the duck? Or rice pudding; Elinor promises to make him her recipe, which has two teaspoons of rice to a pint of cream. Once Jerome would have said tripe, or kidneys, or liver, but he’s eaten often enough in the restaurant to learn about them. All food is good, says Flora. Pigs’ ears, chicken feet, ox cheek. Coming from thrifty people, making any food desirable. You mightn’t like it, that’s okay, but that’s not to say it isn’t delicious. And a good hamburger is a fine thing.
With beetroot, asks Ivan.
Well …
Pizzas with pineapple, says Jerome, if you want truly awful. Flora vetoes that too, on the grounds that it’s a travesty.
There are a lot of oysters, there’s something comfortingly excessive about such a quantity of them, let alone the nature.
Next is soup, a zippy light puree of vegetables: potato, leek, carrot, says Flora vaguely, meaning she’s not going to give them the recipe. Then it’s the moment of the no main course. Instead there is a large platter of raw ham, and a salad of thin beans with walnut oil and sherry vinegar. Flora puts this on the table, and another bowl of lettuce salad, and at the end, pushing aside the book piles, a plate with cheeses, another with red and yellow pears, and a small pyramid of lemon tarts. Made by Kate in the restaurant.
There, she says, what you see is what you get. Now I am sitting down for the rest of the meal. Though she does fetch clean plates. Jerome pours the wine.
I see no main course doesn’t mean fewer courses, or eating less, says Ivan.
Oh Ivan; I think you didn’t trust me.
Of course I did. I was just curious, that’s all.
I believe you and Flora are writing a book, Jerome says to Elinor.
Elinor looks at Flora, who has gone rather pink. It is a long time ago that they planned to write a book about the women in the Séverac story of the duchess murdered by her husband in punishment for her adultery. A sort of vertical cross-section of all the lives of all the women who lived in the castle at that one moment in history. Start with Gloriande and work down. Or with the scullery maid, pot girl, and work up. Including the hideously ugly and Calvinistic mother-in-law, who schemed and perhaps invented the duchess’s downfall, and Catherine her maid, her lady-in-waiting, her confidante, whose husband the steward betrayed Gloriande to the duke. Gloriande the spirited, witty, beautiful woman who’d repulsed the steward’s amorous advances. How to work out whose side Catherine was on? Husband or mistress: who had her loyalty? Great stuff there, and in past times they’d plotted their use of these narratives. Even though Ivan said that neither of them was a historian, did they have any idea of the work involved?
I’m not sure that writing is the right verb, says Elinor. Pondering maybe.
Pondering, says Flora. Imbroglioing.
That’s nice.
Whatever it means.
Maybe hatching, says Elinor. Gestating? No. Hatching. A couple of broody hens sitting on a clutch of eggs that might not even be fertilised. Just going rotten while the poor old clucky hens hatch away, hoping for golden chicks.
I see, said Jerome. But you’re not exactly lost for words.
She’s a dictionary maker, says Flora. She knows words that the rest of us can only have nightmares about.
They’re all common currency, says Elinor. More or less. Sometime or other. Besides, she says, and she knows she’s being a bit unkind here, but seeing Flora sitting beside Jerome so safely means she can risk a bit of bracing malice. Besides, I thought you were going to write your food book first.
Perhaps, says Flora, faintly smiling. Séverac is another country, and I am not the person I was then. I did not know what life could do.
Oh yes, but who does, says Elinor, seeing where Flora’s thoughts have gone and hasty to move them away. Ivan was having his fling with the floozy then, she says, and I was rather prone to noticing wronged women. Gloriande, I mean, and wanting to slit the floozy’s wrists and ankles, the way the duke did to his wife. I remember doing a lot of bleeding her to death.
Elinor is about to add, Fancy you still thinking about that book, all these years on, remembering Flora in the beautiful self-containment of her youth. Instead she says, We should go to Séverac, one day, and do it.
Oh, says Flora. One day.
Jerome says, Tell us about your overseas plans. Isn’t this a farewell dinner? He lifts his glass. To hopeful travelling, and happy arriving.
The Spensers have no intention of going to Séverac on this trip. It is to be a stay in London, with Ivan working at the British Library, and then to Paris, to the Bibliothèque de France. Elinor is going for the ride; her work is not done overseas. She will do Paris things, walk about a lot, catch her favourite buses, make her usual pilgrimages. To the Marais. Ste Geneviève du Mont. Cluny and the Lady with the Unicorn. And they will see old friends.
Particularly Marie-Claude. Marie-Claude is now a widow. Christophe has died. Every now and then Elinor says these words over in her head. There’s something terrifying about them because they seem to have lost their meaning. She is used to words obeying her. She expects them to be transparent. These she can say, but she cannot understand them. Christophe: the charming elegant funny man she made love with the summer of unfaithful Ivan’s winter with Samantha. He is the man who taught her the notion of loving friends, who said he did not love Marie-Claude any less or any less importantly because he was having sexy fun with Elinor. She’d always wondered if Marie-Claude saw it quite like that. She’d said to Christophe that Ivan certainly didn’t; having sexy fun with Samantha meant that he wanted to go and live with her forever. Christophe said in that case Ivan was a very foolish man and everybody could only hope he would come to see the error of his ways.
Christophe. Lovely lively Christophe. How can he be dead? It is as though there is a rather poor joke going on and he will slip into the room and say, Boo! in that rather endearing nursery way his English often takes him.
Marie-Claude does not look any different: thin, quick, neat, in smart dark clothes, perhaps a bit more severe but they are all getting older and this is how it shows with her. As usual, she makes Elinor feel large, like a horse beside a pony. Once she might have thought, like a carthorse beside a racehorse, but now she is not so hard on herself. Ponies are okay and so are horses.